Location sharing- I think I’m worryingly in the minority

[PomPomHead]

I am seriously worried that I’m in the minority here and the world’s gone mad. Why would you share your location All The Time with every member of your family ( even, as in the case of my friends, with your
married 30 year old daughter!)? Why does nobody feel able to be independent and unwatched ? It baffles me and nobody has been able to persuade me of the so-called safety benefits?
Is checking your location now the new showing me you love me?

I can understand in specific circumstances ie gor young people travelling abroad etc but day to day we dont.
We were discussing this the other day with extended family all of whom use it in various ways, one constantly checks where their child is.
We dont have it for our foster son because we dont feel we need it,( although it might have been useful for a previius young person!). I was a good kid but would have hated my parents knowing exactly where I was and when.

I don't know anyone in the mountain biking community who doesn't have it. Its very useful if you are by the side of a road with a blow out waiting for your mum to turn up with kit - bitter experience!

My mum and I use life360.

It started because they were off on holiday to a totally different time zone and she just wanted to have someone aware of her location.

now we just use it to piss each other off 🤣 aww

My DH never wanted it, but I did because he's a hiker and could easily have an accident, fallen over etc. Well anyway this did happen one day and DH fell on his face and injured his ribs. Not a serious injury I hasten to add, but it made him think. After that he had to admit Life 360 is a good sensible thing to have on your phone in case he got seriously injured one day, so we installed it. It's good for practical reasons too.

Yes, same for us. The specifics of our jobs and caring for our disabled kids mean that we are constantly planning logistics between ourselves. It's much easier to just check the map than to be constantly phoning each other for an updated ETA which would get right on my tits and I'd feel like I worked in a taxi rank.

I think maybe these people who make silly blanket statements about it being "controlling and creepy" are not in very healthy relationships 😬 Or just have zero understanding that other people's lives and responsibilities are different to their own.

Same here. If other people want to they can get on with it. My friend was tracking her husband in a neighbouring town last week and looking at what shops he'd visited, how much he'd spent and which pub he'd gone to for lunch. I thought it was a bit weird.

The only time that DH and I location share is when one of us is on our way home from somewhere and we need to work out timings for food and who's doing which part of childcare etc

I think it's intrusive and creepy to always need to know someone's location via an app. Whatever happened to trust?

I do it with DH and DD. DD because she is 13 and has a long walk to/from school and is starting to go places with friends so I can see where she is. DH works a half hour drive away so I can see how close he is to home without having to phone him. It has also helped us track down his phone when he lost it.

if you’ve nothing to hide then what is the problem?

DH, I and Uni aged daughter have it for practical reasons, Uni aged son prefers not to have it - up to him.

When DH is on the train coming home from work, I can check his ETA so that I can time dinner accordingly without having to ring to ask his ETA.

When DD comes back from a late shift (1-2 am), I can just check that she's back safely in the night without having to get out of bed and look out the window to make sure her car is there.

When we're at the supermarket and DD wakes up, she can send messages like " can you grab me a deodorant/a watermelon" or whatever she's decided she needed.

When DD drives back to Uni, we can see she's arrived safely without her having to call us. DS has to ring us (or us ring him if he forgets).

If anyone is picking anyone up from the station/airport etc, we can keep on top of arrival times without multiple calls/texts.

If we're caught in traffic, we don't need to stop to make a phone call or send a text.

Basically it's a useful tool. Why would be so worried about sharing where we are with each other. In this house no one is controlling and no one is doing anything they need to hide - so there's no reason not to make our lives easier with a tool that gives us information. Similarly, we're absolutely fine with DS opting out - but it does make his life harder and mean he has to make more texts and phone calls, and probably wait around more for us to arrive places as we don't have that real time information. I can see that it could be misused in cases of control, but honestly if you're living with a controlling partner, your phone app is the least of your problems!

It’s something that can obviously be a useful tool, but normalising the use of it is an absolute gift to controlling abusers.

god no i cant even imagine ever wanting to see where my husband is tbh I have better things to be getting on with haha

I share mine temporarily in winter as I cycle home from work and theres a little part of it on the canal and its dark and makes me slightly nervous - so i share just for that part of my cycle so if anything happened me someone knows where I am haha

It’s certainly hit a general nerve! and being told I’m not in a healthy relationship for questioning it is not where I thought this might go.

We don't have it on permanently but DH will share his location when he's leaving work which is very helpful for organising dinner as his commute can be quite variable depending on traffic. After an hour it switches back off

Goodness, who told you that questioning location sharing means you're not in a healthy relationship?

The only people I share my location with are dh and my 12 year old dd.

To be fair, neither of them care one bit and no one ever checks to see where I am (based on the ridiculous assumptions and questions I get about where I am or if I can do something or can I go get whatever from the shop 😂).

I find it really useful though. Obviously, with dd, it’s a safety issue. It’s helped me a few times to determine she wasn’t where she was meant to be. It’s also useful to find her bloody phone, which she has a habit of leaving random places. With Dh, it’s very helpful in knowing when he is going to make an appearance instead of messaging him while he’s driving or when he’s off somewhere without signal (we live very rurally). Or if he’s at the shop still and I need something.

I can’t imagine having other family or friends on there, because I have no need to know where they are. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I think people are used to location based apps now (snapchat, etc), by people I mean, not 40 year old people like me. 🤣

Though if my 70 year old MIL knew she could track our movements, she totally would. I can totally imagine getting a random, “That cafe has great brownies” or “I saw the most beautiful rhododendron in the hedge to the right just beyond the bend with the crooked tree.” 😳

Friend got upset when her parent turned it off to do something that she disapproved of. The mum was in her 50s.

I have no issue with it at all. My partner and I do it, can be handy occasionally when someone is late, stuck in traffic or whatever. If you don’t like it, don’t use it..

We are in the minority in our family as well. I just don't get it at all. Why do you need to know where everyone in your family is? My husband took his dad out for lunch and his mum phoned his dad because he wasn't where she expected him to be. They had changed their mind about what they wanted for lunch. My niece also told my husband that if you don't share your location with your partner that means you are cheating 😂Absolutely bat shit crazy haha

But the problem here is controlling abusers, not a useful app that provides information that can make many people's lives easier.

My youngest at university comes home sometimes he shares his journey with us on Google maps before dad would go out if he broke down, had an accident. But he switches it off once he reaches the destination.

It's peace of mind for me.

I on the other hand hate the ring doorbell.

We have Google location sharing on. I forget it's there 99% of the time. Only use it to see if DH is on his way home for cooking etc

My husband and two 30-ish adult daughters and I all share locations.
We’re all very close, it’s fun and just practical.
It’s up to individuals isn’t it. Don’t like it? Don’t do it.

My kids have it and I've only ever really used it to locate their bloody phones..is it at school, in the car, left at Grandma's?

As a family of 4 we all share our location, it’s not like we check it all the time but it certainly comes in handy, just a few examples

I have an older teen who is just starting to socialise at night, I just map to her location to collect her rather than faffing with sat nav, she also then knows when I am a minute or two away so can be ready waiting for me.

I ride horses, always on my own, I like my family to know where I am should I have an accident (I have fallen before and been knocked out, thankfully I was with someone but it’s made me very aware), same applies for my husband who mountain bikes.

we go to music festivals and will split up to watch different bands, you can’t rely on your phone calls or texts going through but GPS always seems to work so we can easily find each other

3 years ago when my daughter was 13 I got a voicemail from school at 10.30 to ask why she was absent. She had left the house at 8am to go to school. I tried to call the school back, no answer - without tracking I would of left work and headed straight to the school but I could clearly see her last known location was school at 8.45am (when she turned the phone off as per school rules), turns out they had marked her incorrectly. It ended up taking an hour to get hold of someone in the school office to clear things up but it saved me panicking

and on a more light hearted note I’ve been out on long dog walks when the weather has really turned nasty, I have come home soaked through to a nice surprise of a warmed towel and my fav fleece pjs, a cup of coffee, breakfast on the go and a DH standing at the door ready to take over the task of cleaning the dogs so I can get warm and dry myself

I don’t feel I am loosing any independence and certainly don’t feel watched. For the younger generation especially it seems the norm as on one of the apps (I think it’s Snapchat ?) they can all see where their friends are. That to me is a step too far but for my immediate family I have no issue with location sharing, if they want to stalk me they can but given my life is rather dull I very much doubt they do!

I find it weird too OP. I have two teenager daughters and I just imagine how I’d feel when I was a teenager if my mum was stalking me. It makes me feel claustrophobic